Sue Costa was born in New York City in 1948 and moved to Rochester with her family as a child. She attended the State University at Oswego; received a BA in Sociology from the University of Puerto Rico in 1969; and received a Master of Social Work in Organization and Planning (MSW) from Syracuse University School of Social Work. Although of Italian heritage, she spoke fluent Spanish and was an impassioned advocate for the Hispanic community and its causes beginning in 1968 when she worked in the first summer program for children at the Ibero-American Action League. She also was intensely interested in demographics and tracked the growth of the Hispanic population at a time when it was burgeoning across the United States.

After college in Puerto Rico, she worked for several Rochester service agencies including the LifeLine Crisis Phone Service as a telephone counselor; the Rochester and Genesee Mental Health Center as a Psychiatric Assignment Officer; the Lewis Street Center and the Frederick Douglas Community Center as a group worker; the Northeast Health Center as a Community Affairs Coordinator; the Wayne County Rural Comprehensive Health Program as the Director of Supportive Services; the Rochester Police Department Victim Assistant Program as the program’s director; and the Urban League of Rochester as a project director. During this time she was also working toward her MSW which she received in 1980.

Also in 1980 she began her twenty-two-year career at The Health Association of Rochester and Monroe County as Associate Executive Director. In 1984 she became Executive Director and remained in that position until she retired in 2002. The Health Association was a community-based multidisciplinary non-profit human service agency that provided prevention, education, training, case management, advocacy and clinical treatment services to the Rochester region. Services centered in areas including mental health, alcoholism/substance abuse, developmental disabilities, employee assistance, HIV/AIDS, compulsive gambling, outreach/family wellness centers, vocational rehabilitation, LifeLine, sign language interpreting services and training and administrative services to other agencies. After her retirement, Costa worked part-time as Executive Director of the Rochester Engineering Society from 2004-2007.

From 1978 to 2007 she also had an active free lance career doing consultant work with agencies and organizations in planning, research, training, motivation, management, program evaluation, grant writing, decision making, leadership skills, diversity and public policy analysis. In 1980 and 1991 she was an adjunct faculty member at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the Department of Social Work.

Furthermore, Sue Costa was politically active, working on several Democratic campaigns including Nancy Padilla’s and the Latino Campaign Committee and championing and teaching in the trailblazing Latino Political Campaign Academy.

Her dedication to helping others and improving her community were legend. A list of the organizations she was actively involved in as founder, facilitator and board or committee member follows. They range the spectrum of community service organizations in the Rochester area. Her contributions of time and expertise to these organizations were prodigious and sincerely lauded.